


The View From the Edge

by paperficwriter



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 11:44:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10513101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperficwriter/pseuds/paperficwriter
Summary: Soldier: 76 collapses from his wounds after the fight in Dorado. Good thing there's someone there to consider kicking him while he's down.





	

It had taken nearly thirty minutes after the battle with Los Muertos for Soldier: 76 to finally collapse in the Dorado alleyway.

Clearly, he had known it was only a matter of time before he would succumb to the injuries he had sustained. That’s why he had concentrated on taking an aimless, twisting path through the Mexican city, avoiding major thoroughfares. Generally he kept moving south - which must have been where he had left whatever mode of transportation he had used to get there - but then, near an industrial scrapyard, his knees buckled. One arm against a building wall, the other clutching the heavy pulse rifle. Of course that would be important to him, but soon it fell with a clatter as he gripped his side, where he had taken the brunt of the grenade blast.

Idiot, Reaper thought. The child had foolishly put herself in danger, had lingered too long, and then the rogue had hesitated in deciding what to do about it, waiting for the last possible moment, losing the gang and just barely rescuing the girl. Sloppy. Careless.

After a moment, it had become too much, and Soldier: 76 sagged to the ground in an unconscious pile.

_“Old habits die hard.”_

And now that old habit was going to kill him. Ironic.

Reaper stepped off the edge of the building he had been standing on, feeling his body discorporate and reform on the ground. As he walked the few feet to the form of his unintentional quarry - he hadn’t planned on even being in that part of the city that day, had only been picking up a Talon shipment that had required a heavier hand in case the drop had gone south - he watched the man’s hands, his head, his chest. Still breathing, but slow and shallow.

For some reason, the Hellfire shotgun in his hand felt heavier than usual. He only needed one. One shot, aimed at the scar that was just visible running toward that thinning white hair.

But…

Reaper reached out with his boot to kick the rifle away from the limp, gloved hand. No response. Not even a twitch.

It would be over in an instant. No one was out here; he had made sure of that. Perhaps a security camera towards the street would pick up the blip of his weapon discharging, but he would be gone before the lazy local authorities came to investigate. All they would find was the body, Soldier: 76, taken out. The news would spread.

But then they would know what he knew. What, more than likely, _only_  he knew.

That for a time, Jack Morrison, the original leader of Overwatch, had still been alive, until someone had blown his brains out in the asshole of Dorado.

Then who knew what kind of stories people would tell.

About either of them.

“Get up,” Reaper rasped, kicking his prone body in the shoulder. He rolled, some breath shaking out of his lungs, but otherwise still unresponsive. “Face me like a man, you…”

What was he going to call him? A liar? That would be fitting. Sitting back and watching them erect that stupid statue, letting the people he called “friends” suffer his loss. A fool? Also would be true. He carried the same weapon, fought the same way, relying on only a shitty mask to hide who he was. Reaper knew him better, had run alongside him for too long, enduring his heroics, tolerating his snap judgements, mocking the ‘work ethic’ that had made him such a damn golden boy…

The barrel of the gun was pressed so hard against the man’s forehead that he could make out the white spreading from where he was restricting blood vessels close to the skin.

Just pull the trigger. Be done with it.

Seconds passed. A minute.

“I said, get up!” he roared, his voice echoing between the buildings. And that was just worse, because even when the bastard was unconscious, he could still get a rise out of him. “Dammit…”

Taking one last look around, he stooped down, pulled the body onto his shoulder like a sack and disappeared into the growing darkness.

—

_“Get up!” He screams it as the building burns behind them. Gabe can feel where some of the scalding debris has left open wounds on his arms, on his face, but none of that matters right now, because Jack is on his back, and he’s not breathing. He’s not breathing, he’s not responding, and his face under grime and blood is going pale._

_Without even pausing, Gabe tears the armor off him, yelling into the comm as he does. “Amari! I need you here five minutes ago!”_

_“I am doing what I can, Gabriel. I cannot get a shot through the smoke, and I am trying to get around the building.”_

_“I don’t fucking care if Reinhart needs to throw you over it! Man down! Get here!”_

_He ignores the howling of his muscles as he positions himself over Jack’s torso, dropping into several, quick pulses to his xyphoid process. He’s probably going to be a bitch about this later, because he can already feel him bruising under the force of his hands, but Gabe will deal with it if it means that there will_ be _a later._

_Over the hum of noise, he counts to himself, then he tips Jack’s head to clear his airway, grabs his nose and breathes into him.  He watches his chest rise, fall, rise…and then Jack chokes into his mouth, and Gabe pulls back._

_“Fucking hell, Jack,” he immediately curses, putting a hand on his shoulder because he knows him well enough that he’s fairly certain he’ll want to jump up and head back into the fray. “Don’t even think about it. I’ll shoot you in the legs if I have to.”_

_“The team. I got to…” Jack grabs the center of his chest, groaning._

_“You’ve got to stay where you are until Amari gets here,” Gabe growls._

_“Then_ you _need to go.” Jack is craning his head, trying to look back at the facility ablaze, rambling orders…and Gabe gives him a slap. Not a hard one, but just enough to get his attention. “The hell, Gabe?!”_

_“There’s nothing left to do. The team’s out. The omnics have been trashed. So I’m staying right here, and you’re not getting rid of me. Got it?”_

_Jack blinks those blue eyes of his - bright enough that they still shine, even in the mess of the rest of his face - and finally he seems to drop his head back. Gabe knows that he believes him, but he keeps his palm pressed against his upper arm. Just in case._

—

As Jack awoke, the strange half-dream fading into the haze of his mind, he realized that he wasn’t in an alley anymore. In fact, he wasn’t even outside. On his back, he stared through his visor (thank God he still had his mask on, wherever he was) at the ceiling of a one-man ship of some kind. His body was still criss-crossed with pain, but he was alive. And that was something.

But when he moved to get up, any relief went cold, because he couldn’t feel his legs, and he only had one arm free. The other - his dominant hand, he noted - had been cuffed to the cot on which he was lying.

“You’re awake. I was starting to wonder how long it would take.”

Reaper. Jack knew him from the holos he had seen, the information he had intercepted from Winston’s broadcast to the surviving members of Overwatch, and the horror stories he had uncovered about the killer’s victims. Drained of life, frozen in horror at their last moments. He sat two yards away, staring him down, Jack’s pulse rifle balanced in his lap. He tapped it rhythmically with his one gloved hand, the claw-like tips tinking against the metal, while his other held one of his shotguns. Jack’s mind immediately started racing, considering all the possibilities as to why he didn’t pull the trigger. Was he taking him back to Talon, to get information out of him? Turning him in? Both seemed unlikely.

Jack yanked at the cuff, testing its give.

“Stop. You’re only going to reopen your wounds.” There was nothing concerning in that gravelly voice. It sounded more like something he was saying as an observation. An annoying possibility.

His wounds. That was another thing worth noting, he realized. His vest had been removed, and his side was bandaged. Stitched, too. No, stapled. “Why do you care? Bleed out, take a gunshot to the head…dead is dead, right?” And if somehow he had become paralyzed, maybe dead was better… “You’re not known for your altruism, Reaper.”

“I don’t want you when you’re half-assed,” the mercenary said simply, putting the rifle down so it was leaning on the wall. “Someone like you…I want to hunt when you’re at your best. You’re not making that easy, throwing your life around like it’s nothing.”

“Thoughtful.” He reached down with his one free hand to rub at his legs, feeling the nerves for a sign of life.

“I injected you with a paralytic. I knew you’d practically jump at the chance to take off as soon as you woke up.” He holstered the shotgun, much to Jack’s surprise, and stood up, gesturing at the side of the cot. “There’s water. You’ve been out for nearly ten hours. You’re dehydrated.”

“Don’t tell me what I am. You don’t know me.”

A short sound like a chuckle came from behind the mask, guttural and stuttering slightly. It was a laugh that sounded…familiar, and it made Jack’s stomach tighten. “Whatever. Do what you want. But if you tear those staples out, I’m not using anesthetic to put them back in.”

Jack believed it.

—

Reaper stood over the small hot pot, adding diced vegetables and strips of meat, letting the stew simmer. Far away in his brain, this felt so strangely like deja vu. Jack, injured, and him, having to dote on him. Not because he wanted to, but because if he didn’t, the idiot wouldn’t take care of himself.

Speaking of which, it seemed that he had fallen asleep again. Or slipped back into unconsciousness. What was really the difference?

Silently, he stared into the pot. If he had had any doubt that it was Jack - and he didn’t - he would have recognized all the scars still jagged across his chest and arms. Most of them, Gabe had been there for: stray bullets, shrapnel, white hot beams of energy.

A burning piece of the Overwatch command console that had collapsed onto his chest, when he thought that he had…

A bubble of broth burst onto the burner, and the hiss brought him back to the present. No time to reminisce. Best to let sleeping ghosts of the past rest while they could. This wasn’t one of the shitty novels that the younger, pre-Overwatch Jack kept tucked under his bunk, a guilty pleasure from when he was a kid: science fiction about space renegades who would turn on one another and then reconcile before the end of 400 pages. Fantasies from when he had known that there was a bigger universe out there waiting for him beyond a few acres of farmland.

He nearly took the pot off the heat, then remembered that Jack always wanted things ten times saltier than any other man he knew. Out of instinct, forgetting that probably age and his condition would not appreciate it, he tossed two more tablespoons worth of kosher salt, slopped it into a bowl and disappeared into nothingness until he was next to the cot.

Even despite his silent approach, Jack stirred at his sudden appearance, startling instinctively but not pulling away from where he stood.

“Eat,” the dark figure commanded, putting the bowl down before sliding back a few steps.

“Fuck off.”

That made him smirk under his mask. “You need your strength. So I can throw you out of here and get out of this dustball garbage dump of a city.”

Jack paused, and there was just the slightest tilt to his head. “Don’t screw around with me,” he said, voice low. “I know you don’t actually intend on letting me go. So just be straight with me.”

“I don’t care what you think you know. Eat, so I don’t have to pump you full of vitamin injections.” Then, he sat so his back was to him. Not exactly a natural position for Reaper - or Gabe, come to think of it - but he knew there was nothing Jack could do to him currently. Not in his state. Maybe he could get a bowl of soup lobbed at his head for his trouble, but that certainly wouldn’t kill him.

He did smile with satisfaction, crossing his arms over his check when he heard the faint click of the mask disengaging. The small space was silent save for the occasional wet noise of Jack eating, except for when something fell to the floor. A piece of vegetable probably. Jack cursed under his breath, then snapped, “This would be easier with both hands, you know. If you really aren’t planning on killing me, then –”

“Also not planning on _getting_  killed. I don’t expect the same consideration from you.”

“Guess you’re not as stupid as you look.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

—

“Don’t get cocky.”

Jack’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth, gravity making it feel like it weighed even more than it should have. Because there was something to those words that he couldn’t shake.

Someone else had said that to him far too many times, even when he was at his most responsible. Someone who he had trusted, who he never had to worry about not having his back in the very slim chance that he _did_  get cocky. Someone he had sparred with, who mocked him, saying that only once he had gotten Jack into some sort of stranglehold. And he didn’t fail to recall how it would sound, so close to his ear, the closeness of their bodies making the gym feel much smaller, much warmer.

Gabe.

Jack stared hard at his back, at the cloak pooling to the ground. It could be, but…

Was it any better, if it was? That now this was who Gabe had become, a merciless killer, remorseless, trying to destroy the people who stood for the same cause he had defended for so long?

“Being a Talon lackey is a waste of your skills,” he commented as he continued eating.

“I’ve been in worse positions.”

Ouch. “Poor you.” He paused, and he wasn’t sure why he said it, but he added, “Doesn’t mean you couldn’t be doing something better with yourself. There are a lot of people you could be doing good for, instead of being some kind of boogeyman for the highest bidder.”

Reaper said nothing for several seconds, then replied with a resigned sigh. “We all have our parts to play. Heroes need villains…Solder: 76.”

What bullshit. “You might think that sounds impressive, but it’s not. You’re not fulfilling some greater purpose with the shit you’re pulling. The world isn’t going to suffer for not having bastards in it, so don’t feed me that line of ‘what light without darkness.’”

Jack practically slammed his mask back on - almost painfully so, hitting his nose, catching the ridge above his eye the wrong way - as soon as he caught the sight of Reaper dematerializing in a flash of shadowy smoke. The bowl rolled across the floor, sending what remained of stew into a messy pattern against metal tiles, as Jack felt a cold hand grab him by his tight jumpsuit near the collar. Jack wrapped his free hand around the wrist, his other instinctively tightening against the cuff holding him, because this was his off-hand, too weak to be effective.

This close, the skull covering Reaper’s face looked like actual bone. His voice was cold, and it actually felt like life energy in Jack was draining, being pulled into the cold void that was Reaper. Was Gabe in there at all? “Then forget the labels. What if I just _want_  to do this?”

“Why?” Jack asked, trying not to sound desperate for the answer. “Why want that?”

“Because Death comes. For everyone. And some people deserve an earlier visit than others.”

“And you get to decide that, perro viejo?” To anyone else, Jack knew that it would probably sound like a slur, but if he was right, if it was Gabe on the other side of the menacing visage looming over him, maybe part of him would recall the ribbing nickname. One that he always rolled his eyes at, because he was only a handful of years older than Jack (if that).

For a moment Reaper’s hand tightened, then relaxed. He was silent, and Jack could feel him staring at him. Through him. In the exchange, he hadn’t even realized that one of the Hellfire monstrosities had been drawn and only now he felt it digging into his rib. His eyes darted between it and his face, the dark shadow of where his own eyes would be.

“That can’t be all you want,” Jack said, finally, quietly. _Because I want more_ , he thought.

Suddenly, a beeping presented itself from a communication console. Despite the tightest grip he could hold onto, Jack felt Gabe disappear from under his fingers. Not for the first time. Hopefully not for the last.

He reappeared by the small radio, said a few words quietly into it, and then disconnected the line. Faintly, Jack could make out a prickling in his legs, like they were waking up from being asleep, and he just very, very carefully wiggled his toes in his boots. Had he actually tried to move them before now? Maybe not.

A movement caught his attention, and he looked up to find the figure in black there again at his bedside. This time, he unlocked the cuff that was holding Jack to the cot, quickly stepping back as his wrist was freed.

“I’m walking out of here for twenty minutes. If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll finish you off. My good nature is past its expiration date.”

Jack wanted to say something more. He wanted to call him by his name. He wanted to beg him to come with him. He wanted to apologize (or maybe ask for his own apology). But…nothing came out. He wasn’t stupid. He knew it was over, the moment between them. No, the rest of it, too. Over. Dead.

This was who they were now.

“Next time we meet, you’re not going to be so lucky,” he said instead.

“I guess we’ll see.” And with that, he was gone again, leaving nothing behind him but tendrils of ebony wisps, and then those disappeared as well.

—

“Goodbye, Jack.”

—

“Goodbye, Gabe.”


End file.
